Security Advisories and Notifications

Threat level: Medium
An attacker with access to multicast traffic may be able to access confidential data.

Severity: Medium
Confidential session data may be able to be observed by an attacker.

A problem was identified that could potentially cause a security vulnerability in certain versions of WebLogic Server. Upgrades are available to correct this problem (see Section II). Oracle treats potential security problems with a high degree of urgency and endeavors to take appropriate steps to help ensure the security of our customers' systems. As a result, Oracle strongly suggests the following actions:

I. Read the following advisory.
II. Apply the suggested action.
III. If you know of any additional users interested in future security advisories, please forward them the registration instructions included in this advisory.

I. Advisory

All sites running clusters are vulnerable to this type of attack if an attacker can gain access to the cluster's subnet.

Multicast messages are used to keep nodes of a cluster in sync. These messages carry important information and they are not encrypted by default. If an attacker breaks into the network, there is a risk of the attacker getting access to confidential information passing on the wire.

This patch resolves the issue by implementing secure encryption of multicast data and providing a way to turn on multicast data encryption on the Cluster MBean.

When enabled, MulticastDataEncryption forces the multicast traffic to be encrypted. By default, multicast encryption is not enabled as it may carry some performance penalty.

The following versions of WebLogic Server and WebLogic Express are affected by this vulnerability

WebLogic Server 8.1 released through Service Pack 4, on all platforms.

WebLogic Server 7.0 released through Service Pack 5, on all platforms.

II. SUGGESTED ACTION

Oracle strongly recommends the following course of actions.

WebLogic Server and WebLogic Express version 8.1

Upgrade to service pack 5.

WebLogic Server and WebLogic Express version 7.0

Upgrade to service pack 6.

SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS

Oracle strongly suggests that customers apply the remedies recommended in all our security advisories. Oracle also urges customers to apply every Service/Maintenance Pack as they are released. Service/Maintenance Packs include a roll-up of all bug fixes for each version of the product, as well as each of the prior Service/Maintenance Packs. Service/Maintenance Packs and information about them can be found at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/bea_main.html

As a policy, if there are any security-related issues with any Oracle product, Oracle will distribute an advisory and instructions with the appropriate course of action. Because the security of your site, data, and code is our highest priority, we are committed to communicating all security-related issues clearly and openly.